Cricket-Winning India rights will give Sony ‘monopoly’ – executive

Daily Mail UK – MUMBAI, March 14 (Reuters) – Adding the rights to broadcast cricket in England and Australia across the subcontinent gave Sony Pictures Networks a dominant position in the sport but winning the rights to India would give it a monopoly, a senior company executive has told Reuters.

Summary

MUMBAI, March 14 (Reuters) – Adding the rights to broadcast cricket in England and Australia across the subcontinent gave Sony Pictures Networks a dominant position in the sport but winning the rights to India would give it a monopoly, a senior company executive has told Reuters.

SPN, owned by Sony Corp, lost out to Star India for the Indian Premier League rights last year but have since won the license to broadcast Australian and English cricket in the subcontinent, taking their tally to seven test playing nations.

Last year Star India bid a staggering 163.48 billion Indian rupees ($2.52 billion) to bag the worldwide television and digital rights of the IPL for five years.

SPN already had five boards under their umbrella after they paid $385 million in 2016 to acquire TEN Sports, which owns the broadcast rights of cricket boards in South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, West Indies and Zimbabwe.

By wrapping up deals for the Australia and England boards, the network, which also holds rights for this year’s soccer World Cup in Russia, will have over 1,000 days of live international cricket over the next five years.